Look at the rhyming words in the book. Is there a pattern to the rhyming? Can you think of other words that rhyme? I studied Drama and French at Bristol University, where I met Malcolm, a guitar-playing medic to whom I’m now married. Look at the expressions of each of the characters in the illustrations. Can you describe how they are feeling? Could you draw your own pictures which show different people’s emotions? I have a little boy and love reading to him, so this reading list will cover the classic (and new) children’s stories we’re enjoying together.

Look at the use of punctuation within the story. Can you explain why each type of punctuation has been used? A really good read-aloud story, with great rhythm, rhyme and repetitive elements. My son is 16 months old, and Room on the Broom is currently his second favourite book - he goes and gets it himself from his book shelf most days, which is really cute. Funnily enough, I find it harder to write not in verse, though I feel I am now getting the hang of it! My novel THE GIANTS AND THE JONESES is going to be made into a film by the same team who made the Harry Potter movies, and I have written three books of stories about the anarchic PRINCESS MIRROR-BELLE who appears from the mirror and disrupts the life of an otherwise ordinary eight-year-old. I have just finished writing a novel for teenagers. My real breakthrough was THE GRUFFALO, again illustrated by Axel. We work separately - he’s in London and I’m in Glasgow - but he sends me letters with lovely funny pictures on the envelopes.I really enjoy writing verse, even though it can be fiendishly difficult. I used to memorise poems as a child and it means a lot to me when parents tell me their child can recite one of my books. Anyone with small children (and older ones too, I'm sure) will be familiar with Julia Donaldson, in particular The Gruffalo and The Gruffalo's Child, which - along with Room on the Broom - have been made into animated films that regularly show on the ABC. My son, at three, enjoys the books but finds the movies too scary - he's still young like that. The kids love this story. They have watched the show over and over and love the book. They both gave the book 5 stars, which might not be fair, but they love it. They can practically recite the lines of the book. Still, it's the first time to read it for all of us.

I grew up in a tall Victorian London house with my parents, grandmother, aunt, uncle, younger sister Mary and cat Geoffrey (who was really a prince in disguise. Mary and I would argue about which of us would marry him). It was first published by Macmillan in 2001 ( ISBN 9780803726574) and since been made into an animated film, narrated by Simon Pegg and starring the voices of Martin Clunes, Rob Brydon, Sally Hawkins, David Walliams, Gillian Anderson and Timothy Spall. The animated film was nominated for an Academy Award for best short animated film in 2013. [3] The book was made into an audiobook narrated by Josie Lawrence and adapted for the stage by Tall Stories Theatre Company in 2008, and has toured around the United Kingdom and the rest of the world since then. I also continued to write “grown-up” songs and perform them in folk clubs and on the radio, and have recently released two CDs of these songs.And you can never get them started on fantasy too young - good witches and bad dragons - perfect! We'll get him reading Tolkien before he's ten...